30-DAY BOOK MARKETING CHALLENGE

By Rachel Thompson

IR Rating:

4.0

Social media expert Rachel Thompson lays out the fundamentals of promoting a book using (mostly) the internet--for those ready to pimp their own work, but not sure how best to do so--in her step-by-step guidebook, the 30-DAY BOOK MARKETING CHALLENGE.

Posted by
IR Staff

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April 28, 2017

A distinctly modern and social-media driven take on the art of marketing books, the focus of Rachel Thompson’s colorful text is how to get your hard work in front of the public, using the internet. As the content of this very website demonstrates, the market for the almost endless kinds of written work is a bustling one, filled with talented writers. Being good, like in many areas of life, is absolutely no guarantee of success.

Like Thompson says, there should always be a promotional plan alongside any book launch. This practical, step-by-step guide focuses the mind on areas that are likely to yield results should you be running your own promotional campaign, giving a day-by-day breakdown of things that will certainly lead to more eyes on your work, and with a bit of luck more sales, too.

The result of a popular newsletter focused on a similar area, the book plays on Thompson’s social media knowledge: while many of us might have the basic concepts of the main social media outlets (or even their business use), the use of Twitter of improve search engine rankings, for example, or the use of Apps to target your work towards particular social media users is beyond the average writer’s scope. There’s no knowledge at all assumed here, though. For that reason, if you’re a regular user of things like Twitter, Facebook and other social media, you might learn a bit about the specific channels you should be interacting with, but you’ll find yourself skipping large chunks. Fortunately, the finer details of the late-in-the-week assignments do seem to do their job.

Each week has a specific theme, (week one: Twitter, week two: Facebook, week four: putting the shine on it all), and sees the days naturally build on the previous day’s progress. Some of the tasks are simple – certainly no more than half an hours work – while others are conceivably ideas that could be pushed out into a vast marketing project, taking in days and a whole host of correspondence. That, we suppose, depends on how far you want to take things.

Can we tell you if it actually works? Not having our book to promote right now, no, not really, but as experienced social media users we can tell you that the advice makes sense, doesn’t look like a huge amount of work for the reasonably technically savvy, and – if your product is decent, of course – does look reasonably likely to add a few sales, too. Essentially, Thompson’s book is clearly knowledgeable, crammed with useful outside links, and does what it says on the tin.